Pope Benedict is troubled by the “excessive zeal” with which rich
countries have been protecting their intellectual property rights,
especially when it comes to health care in developing countries, a
Vatican delegation told the World Intellectual Property Organisation.
“On the part of rich countries there is excessive zeal for protecting
knowledge through an unduly rigid assertion of the right to
intellectual property, especially in the field of health care,” Pope
Benedict said in an Encyclical Letter quoted by the delegation at the
48th World Intellectual Property Organization General Assembly last
month, reports the ZeroPaid website.
The report said copyright holdings have become the bedrock of profits
for an array of business interests, multinational corporations like
those in the movie and music industry in particular and there has been
an increasing push to protect them at all costs, even to the detriment
of society and culture.
“The raison d’être of the protection system of intellectual property
is the promotion of literary, scientific or artistic production and,
generally, of inventive activity for the sake of the ‘common good,’ said
the Holy See delegation.
“Thus protection officially attests the right of the author or
inventor to recognition of the ownership of his work and to a degree of
economic reward. At the same time it serves the cultural and material
progress of society as a whole.”
SIC: CTH/ASIA